Wednesday, August 09, 2006

The Ship is IN THE CITY (Setting and Choreography)

During the long, many revisions of Heart Thief (the book was a romance, then fantasy, then romance again), I surprised my critique group with the fact that the remaining spaceship, Nuada’s Sword, was in Druida City. I, of course, knew this. It was a big issue in the book, that Ruis would be executed if discovered to be IN THE CITY.

For some reason, when the time came when Ruis was caught and taken away, ALL of my critque group thought the Ship was OUTSIDE the city. (This whole thing became our key phrase for setting/choreography mistakes, The Ship Is In The City). So I wrote and rewrote the scene early in the book where Ruis slips back INTO the city to make it clear to the reader where the Ship was located. I went back and probably reminded the reader too many times that The Ship Was In The City.

Since then I think I’ve described the location of the Ship in every one of the Heart books. Hey, it’s THE landmark. A twenty story, two mile Ship would dominate a low tech world’s landscape. I am still sensitive to its location.

So this was one of those massive choreography/setting mistakes, and goes along with “make sure what’s in your head gets down on the page.”

And that sounds like the daily “blessing” to me. May your choreography be pristine today,Robin